Children's book wins PANZ Book Design Awards 2011

Vasanti Unka won the Best Book award for her picture book Hill and Hole at the PANZ Book Design Awards 2011 yesterday evening.

This is the first time the award has gone to a children’s book, described by the judges as ‘a quiet book that becomes more luminous with every turn of the page’.

‘The book immediately stood out as special,’ said the convenor of judges, Sharon Grace.

Vasanti Unka designed and illustrated Hill and Hole, written by Kyle Mewburn and published by Penguin Group (NZ). Along with the Gerard Reid Award for Best Book sponsored by Nielsen Book Services, it was also awarded the Scholastic New Zealand Award for Best Children’s Book.

The 2011 honours in other categories were  split between designers featuring for the first time – Greg Simpson for his cover of Lives of Poets (Victoria University Press) and Jodi Wicksteed for the School Journal Part 3 Number 3 2010 (Learning Media) – and stalwarts of the book design awards: Spencer Levine (cover) and Katrina Duncan (interior) for Blue Smoke (Auckland University Press) and Christine Hansen for Stunning Debut of the Repairing of a Life (Otago University Press).

This annual competition is the only event in New Zealand that recognises the work of book designers.

For a full list of this year’s winners go to the PANZ Book Design Awards website http://www.bookdesignawards.co.nz/winners/

The judges of the PANZ Book Design Awards 2011 are graphic designer Sharon Grace, Eden Potter, a visual communications designer and educator, and Paul Little, books editor for North and South magazine.

Also announced yesterday evening was the Awa Press Young Designer of the Year, awarded to Pieta Brenton.

The judges described Brenton’s design of Fiona Kidman’s poems as ‘the jewel in the crown’ of her portfolio. The book, Where Your Left Hand Rests (Random House New Zealand), was also a highlight for the designer. Brenton says her research involved ‘fossicking’ for fabric and ideas in an antique store, Victorian Gilt – ‘a jewellery box of old fabrics’.

‘Her work reflects a perfect harmony between image, type, spaciousness and scale,’ said the judges. Brenton also won Best Non-illustrated Book for her design of The Great Wrong War (Random House New Zealand).

The judges of the Awa Press Young Designer of the Year 2011 are Dexter Fry, a freelance designer and illustrator, who also judged the award in 2010, and Sue Reidy, a full-time corporate writer and project manager who is involved with graphic designers on a regular basis, briefing and supervising their work.

More information about Pieta and the shortlisted designers for this award on the website

The PANZ Book Design Awards acknowledge excellence in the categories of typography, cover design, and illustrated, non-illustrated, educational and children’s books, with an overall award for Best Book. The awards are administered by the Publishers Association of New Zealand. The finalists in the 14th year of the awards were selected from 136 entries from 33 publishers.